In our daily life, we often encounter names such as blue, blue, and root, which plants do they refer to, and I will talk about this issue today.
One, about blue.
The medicinal value of "blue" was first contained in the "Shennong Materia Medica", which has a record of blue fruit (blue fruit) being used in medicine: "bitter taste, cold." The Lord resolves all poisons, kills Gu worms, injects ghosts, and stings poison. Wear for a long time, the head is not white, and the body is light. ”；What kind of blue is blue, from ancient times to modern pharmacists, there are different theories. Some say that it is the fruit of indigo, some say that it is the fruit of horse indigo, some say that it is the fruit of woad, and some say that it is a generic name for several kinds of indigo, which needs to be further studied. It is now generally believed that blue is a plant with the name "blue" with the effect of dyeing blue, namely woad indigo of the cruciferous family, plate indigo of the family of the family of Tycophyllaceae, and polygonum tinctorium ait), legume indigo (indigofera tinctoria linnetc.
Second, about the board blue.
Banlan is the official Chinese name of the plant, and this name comes from the "Flora of Hainan";Its scientific name is Strobilanthes Cusia (Nees) Kuntze;The alias is called Ma Lan in ancient books;In plant taxonomy, it belongs to the genus Equine in the family Aceae. It is a perennial one-time fruiting herb with a single leaf opposite
Spike-like inflorescences erect, flowers light purple,
The capsule is about 2 cm long;It is distributed in Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Hainan, Zhejiang and other provinces and regions in China, and usually grows in humid places. Its leaves contain indigo dye, which was cultivated in ancient times for dyeing plants for utilization;The roots and leaves are medicinal, with the effect of clearing heat and detoxifying, cooling blood and reducing swelling.
Three, about the banlangen.
Radix is the name of a medicinal herb, not a plant name.
In the Tang Dynasty, the records of the use of the root of the indigo in medicine to cure diseases continue to increase, but the original plant species of the root of the indigo are different, such as Su Jing et al.'s "New Repair of Materia Medica", there are three kinds of blue in the first place, namely woad, wood indigo, and indigo. In the Song Dynasty, Banlan root was widely used in clinical practice by doctors. During the Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the root of Banlan became a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine.
Although Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" in the Ming Dynasty clearly pointed out that Ma Lan is Banlan, due to the unknown records of ancient Materia Medica, the similar efficacy of Zhulan in medicine, etc., for a long period of time, whether it is the folk or the medical community, the record of the root plant of Banlan has been relatively confusing. Until 1985, when the 1985 edition of the Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China (Part I) included the root of the cruciferous family, it was clearly stipulated that the root of the cruciferous plant Woad (Isatis nidigotica fort.).The dried roots have been used to this day.
Woad is native to our country and is cultivated in all parts of the north and south;It is a biennial herb with erect stems, green, multi-branched at the top, smooth plants, powdery powder
The basal leaves are rosette-shaped, the petals are yellowish-white, the short-horned fruit is oblong, and the seeds are pale brown.
Its root is called Banlan root, and the leaf is called Daqingye, which can be used medicinally;
The leaves can also be extracted from blue dye, which is used in the seed oil extraction industry.